Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)

Sunday, 29 April 2018

Well look who's talking about antisemitism in Britain's Labour Party, or the, er, lack of it.

Yes, that Stephen. Stephen the Martyr, persecuted, to hear him tell it, by those dastardly Zionists. In other words, vicar-turned-Peacemakers Trust CEO Sizer, back in that not unfamiliar setting for him, the London studios of the Iranian regimes's propaganda satellite channel, Press TV.

But not that Jonathan. Not the bravely zealous Israel-defender Mr Hoffman but notorious anti-Israel activist Professor Jonathan Rosenhead.

Watch, but have a sick bag close at hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I7MSaEvTqU

And don't please don't overlook my blog's other post of today, by David Singer, the post directly before this one, with another specially-commissioned cartoon by Dry Bones accompanying it.

Israel and the Golan Heights are
dealt with together in one section of the Report – whilst the West Bank
and Gaza are covered in another.

Commas count big time in Middle East diplomacy.

One
comma strategically placed in the descriptor – “… West Bank, and Gaza” –
identifies them as two separate territorial entities that could involve
different solutions.

The Report’s new choice of language
signals that resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict extends beyond the West
Bank and Gaza to also include the Golan Heights and that any end to the conflict will only eventuate with the allocation of sovereignty in all three of these disputed areas.

This
ground-breaking replacement of false statements with factual reality
needs to be replicated by Trump in other areas of misinformation
maliciously spread by the UN, EU and PLO – including:

*
Recognition that the term “West Bank” was first used in 1950 and that
for 3000 years prior thereto that territory had been called “Judea and
Samaria”

* Acknowledgement that the “Palestinian Authority”
created by the 1993 Oslo Accords was disbanded by written decree of PLO
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 3 January 2013.

* Affirmation of the
right of the Jewish People to close settlement on land in Judea and
Samaria (West Bank) to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in
Palestine under the rights vested in them by article 6 of the 1922
League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (the 1922 Mandate) – as
preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

* Ending
the fiction that the territory of former Palestine stopped at the Jordan
River and agreeing that it included the Hashemite Kingdom of
TransJordan – 78% of the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate -
which was granted independence by Great Britain in 1946 and
subsequently renamed Jordan in 1950.

* Confirming that most of the
Golan Heights was included within the 1922 Mandate until Britain ceded
the area to France in the Franco-British Agreement of 7 March 1923

* Agreement that Security Council Resolution 242 does not require Israel’s total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

Cracking
heads by getting all interested parties to adopt an agreed narrative
using terms with agreed meanings is crucial in any communications and
negotiations between them – if Trump’s long-awaited “ultimate deal” is
to not be still born.

Underestimating Trump’s ability to
win the Presidential election race against Hillary Clinton in 2016 has
seen those who confidently predicted his defeat subsequently engaged in
a vitriolic war of attrition in the media trying to convince the
electorate that they voted for the wrong candidate.

Yet Trump continues to confound his detractors with impressive gains in both the American economy and foreign affairs.

The
State Department Report – in dumping the use of the nomenclature “The
Occupied Territories” – has taken one giant step towards ending the
decades-long dishonest semantic warfare waged by the PLO, UN and EU.

Trump has set himself a Herculean task confronting this sorry state of affairs.

Trump
has once again dumbfounded his malevolent doomsday-pundits – whisking
up an omelette that already promises to taste far better than any ever
served up by the PLO, UN and EU.

(Author’s note: The cartoon -
commissioned exclusively for this article – is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry
Bones” – one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international
media publications for decades.)

Celebraing Israel's 70th birthday, Beatrix von Storch from the leader-team of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) speaks in the German Bundestag of the special relationship between Germany and Israel and blasts antisemitism.

Friday, 27 April 2018

There are about 120,000 Jews in Australia, roughly 85,000 of them adults. The results of a poll, known as the "Gen17" Australian Jewish community survey, taken between February and May last year and attracting 8621 replies, have been released to much fanfare.

Note that I don't say "by 8621 respondents". And for good reason: there were no safeguards in place to prevent those with a particular axe to grind filling out the questionnaire more than once. (At least one prominent, left-leaning, communal figure has made no secret of participating in the survey several times.)

Never mind that the poll's methodology has been called into question, with pollsters desperately touting for responses among various constituencies, online and in person, including approaching parents of Jewish day school children as they waited to pick up their kids, and offering them coffee while they filled the questionnaires out.

Here, retired professor Bill Rubinstein, who during the 1980s and 1990s was involved in conducting polls on behalf of Isi Leibler's Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs, declares the survey "deeply flawed" and pulls few punches:

'The only proper way to conduct such a survey is to obtain a comprehensive master list of all Jews in the communities being surveyed ̶ in this case, Melbourne and Sydney ̶ and then draw up a random sample of names on these lists, a genuinely random list obtained from a table of random numbers or generated by a computer. This is, of course, the method adopted in all surveys of voting intentions, and is the reason why a truly random sample of only 1500-2000 registered voters, drawn from the millions of registered voters, will produce a result normally within a few per cent of the actual outcome....

Using a random sample ... is not, however, what the “Gen17” survey has done. Apparently, it has simply requested that all local Jews answer its online questionnaire, and reported on the responses of those who did.... Simply reporting on the replies of voluntary respondents is exactly what was done in probably the most notoriously inaccurate poll in history, that conducted by the American weekly The Literary Digest during the 1936 presidential election. A popular magazine of the time, it succeeded in obtaining no fewer than 2.4 million responses as to voting intentions at that election, and confidently predicted that Republican candidate Alfred M. Landon would easily defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for re-election. Of course, the very opposite happened: FDR trounced Landon, and was re-elected with a record majority. At the same election, the newly founded Gallup Poll employed the valid method of surveying voters, and predicted that Roosevelt would win decisively. Largely because of The Literary Digest fiasco, that journal’s method of conducting surveys was abandoned.

Unfortunately, however, the Gen17 survey has used The Literary Digest technique. While its 8600 respondents are superficially a very impressive number, its results are reliable only insofar as they represent a truly random sample of the Jewish community, without any biases. “Appropriately weighting” its results will not correct the absence of randomness, and almost nothing can be inferred about background or attitudes of those it has not polled. Any adjustment by assuming that those it has polled will be similar to those it has not polled will be valid only if these two samples are similar, for which it has no evidence....'

He goes on:

'The major problem with the survey ... is that the background and attitudes of those who did not participate in the survey ̶ 90 per cent of the community ̶ are unknown, and simply cannot be inferred from the responses of those who actually did vote. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that those who did participate represent anything like a random sample of the whole community, but is a group hallmarked by clear biases....

Several of the findings in the survey strike me as being, frankly, unbelievable. Thirty-two per cent of respondents stated that the Israeli government should negotiate with Hamas, officially regarded as a terrorist body by all Western governments, with which no one in the Israeli mainstream would negotiate until it changes its charter that calls for the destruction of Israel. Similarly, 37 per cent of respondents stated that non-Jewish people suffer from discrimination in Israel, a position here associated only with the extreme left. The sheer implausibility of both of these “findings” strongly suggest either that their respondents are a deeply unrepresentative sample of the Jewish community, or that the poll has been abused by multiple votes from a minority....' [Emphasis added]

It's extremely concerning to see the poll's organisers snuggling up with the local supporters of that highly questionable, indeed dangerous, organisation, the New Israel Fund, who seem to be going all out to reap as much political capital out of the survey's ostensible results as they can.

A particularly brazen and egregious instance of this propagandistic drive occurred last Sunday evening in Melbourne, when, under the aegis of the survey's organisers, a panel convened to discuss the results of the survey and its implications.

Alarmingly, the panel included (why, if not solely for partisan purposes?) Professor Emerita Ilana Snyder, representing the NIF Australia and touting that organisation at length. She especially recommended it to Jewish young people keen to participate in communal affairs.

Learn more about this lamentable state of affairs from decidedly non-leftist communal broadcasters Alan Freedman, Michael Burd and their guest Professor Rubinstein on this J-Air "Nothing Left" podcast. It's the first topic in that podcast, and fear not: although contact is lost during Freedman and Burd's interview with the professor, it's soon restored.

Thursday, 26 April 2018

What a rum lot! It sounds like a dirge to me, a wail of derision against the execrable Labour leader. But alas, it's a tribute to him, on the part of old and not so old lefties, anti-Americans and unilateral nuclear disarmament advocates at a "Don't Bomb Syria" demo in London recently:

Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Brevity of Life"The days of our years are threescore and ten" - Psalms xc, 10

"Three score and ten," the youth replies,"How far off seems the day.""Three score and ten," the old man cries,"How quickly passed away"....

Those are the opening lines of a poem penned in Victorian times by a British Jew, Philip Abraham (Jewish Chronicle, 2 December 1864).

He was, of course, thinking in terms of end of life, but as we all know, and he could not, 70 epitomises a beginning of life, the period in which the State of Israel has been in existence, and miraculously flourished in so many ways.

In Jewish tradition "seventy is a symbol of perfection, of completion" explains Chief
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis at the same event, after paying tribute to Regev, Bnei
Akiva, and before giving a stirring encomium to Medinat Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Z_QfEXFks

More videos can be seen on Bnei Akiva's YouTube channel, including a Yom Ha'atzmaut tribute to Israel by Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson MP. (Read snippets here)

Sunday, 22 April 2018

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The 29th Arab Summit – concluded in Dhahran on 15 April – has presented President Trump with a wonderful opportunity to circumvent the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) refusal to consider Trump’s eagerly-awaited proposals to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.

“We reaffirm that the Palestine Cause is the entire Arab nation's main priority, stressing the Arab identity of occupied East Al-Quds as the capital of the State of Palestine.”

Using the term “Palestine Cause” rather than “Palestinian cause” indicates the Arab world now intends focusing on recovering territory lost in the 1967 Six Day War without necessarily creating another Palestinian Arab state – in addition to Jordan – in former Palestine.

The communique further reinforced this interpretation when adding:

“The conflict could be ended through a two-state solution that guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the borders of 4 July 1967 with East Al-Quds as its capital.”

Using the words “could be ended” rather than “can only be ended” is highly significant in the context of this long-running conflict where every word uttered is invariably scrutinised and analysed in great detail.

The Summit’s declared “two-state solution” – pressed for the last 25 years by the PLO and the Arab League and endorsed by the United Nations and the European Union as the only solution to end the Arab-Jewish conflict – is now being seen by the Arab world as just one possible solution.

The Dhahran Communique downgraded the PLO’s sole-spokesman status:

“We consider the Jordanian authorities as the only body in charge of the administration, maintenance and access to Al-Aqsa Mosque”

This unequivocal Arab endorsement of Jordan challenges the PLO having any future control or influence in the most sensitive area of crucial concern to the Islamic world in Jerusalem – the Moslem holy sites.

Jordan has maintained its presence in Jerusalem as Islamic Holy Shrines Custodian for the last 24 years as a result of the 1994 Peace Agreement between Jordan and Israel – article 9 declaring:

“1. Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.

2. In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.

3. The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.”

The Washington Declaration – signed by His Majesty King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the White House on July 25, 1994 in the presence of President Clinton – formally ended the 46-year state of war between Jordan and Israel.

The Washington Declaration is testament to America’s role as the only power possessing the prestige and clout to change Arab and Jewish perceptions on resolving their long-running conflict.
Jordan’s special role in Jerusalem recognised by the Summit closely follows PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s recent assertion that Jordanians and Palestinians are indeed one people.

Resolving the “Palestine Cause” remains more easily achievable in negotiations between Israel and Jordan within the framework of their existing peace treaty – rather than resuming fruitless negotiations pursued over the last 25 years between Israel and the PLO.

Ending the 100-years-old “Palestine Curse” which has so terribly afflicted both Jews and Arabs could well be within Trump’s grasp thanks to the Dhahran Summit.

(Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article – is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones” – one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.)

Wednesday, 18 April 2018

The screengrab at left is from a video that the Vlad Tepes blog uploaded on Youtube some hours ago.

To quote Vlad himself:"Youtube pulled this video and gave me a “community guidelines” strike on my channel .I guess we aren’t to know how things are in Germany today."

He then posted it to Bitchute, and you can see the brief but disturbing footage here

Meanwhile, a brave young woman, Freya from Cologne, talks frankly and fearlessly about the menace that the mass migration of unvetted Muslim males into Europe is having upon the continent's girls and women.

It's not the sort of talk we hear too often from Western "feminists".

Nor from Western liberals in general, all too prone, it seems, to sacrifice the rights of women, including Muslim women oppressed by their own culture, on the altar of political correctness. (Instructive if depressing article here)
To quote the wonderful Professor Emerita Phyllis Chesler, a Jew and a Zionist and one of a mere handful of high-profile Western feminists who have not betrayed the cause in the face of creeping islamisation:

'.... My generation of feminists believed in universal human rights. We were not multi-cultural relativists. We called out misogyny when we saw it and did not exempt a rapist, a wife-beater, or a pedophile because he was poor (his victims were also poor); or a man of color (his victims were also people of color); or because he had an abused childhood (so did his victims)....An honor killing is the cold-blooded murder of girls and women simply because they are female. Being born female in a shame-and-honor culture is, potentially, a capital crime; every girl has to keep proving that she is not dishonoring her family; even so, an innocent girl can be falsely accused and killed on the spot....

In honor killings, murders are carefully planned conspiracies and may be perpetrated by multiple family-of-origin members. Brothers, uncles, fathers, and other male relatives usually commit the murder, although mothers have also been known to collaborate in the murders of their daughters; sometimes, they are hands-on perpetrators.

Batterers who murder in the West are usually acting in an unplanned and spontaneous way. They alone are the perpetrators. Their own families do not assist them nor does the victim’s family-of-origin. In the West, fathers rarely murder their teenage daughters. This is what happens in a classic honor killing.

Honor killings in the West are sometimes marked by excessive violence, such as repeated stabbing, raping, bludgeoning, or being set aflame. Such killings are similar to what serial killers do to unknown, often prostituted, women.

In the West, batterers and wife killers are not celebrated—they are shunned. If possible, they are also prosecuted. Hindus in India, and Muslims, worldwide, who commit honor killings, are viewed as heroes who have saved their family’s honor. Thus, they feel no shame or remorse....Only those who believe that it is shameful to expose anything negative about Muslims, especially if it is true, silence such exposure by “shaming” it as racist and “Islamophobic.”....'

Monday, 16 April 2018

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – refusing to bow to pressure by President Trump to cease payments to terrorists and their families currently exceeding US$400 million annually – is looming as a potential threat to end 96 years of unbroken Hashemite rule in Jordan.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas – addressing the ninth annual Islamic Beit al-Maqdes International Conference in Ramallah last week – has sent a veiled message of the PLO’s intention to challenge Jordan’s ruling Hashemite family if PLO demands for a State in the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital are not met.

Jordan comprised almost 77% of Palestine between 1920 and 1946 until granted independence by Great Britain and being renamed The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan – subsequently being renamed Jordan in 1950 following Transjordan’s illegal annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1948 ( redesignated the West Bank).

This semantic sleight of hand could never change the historic and demographic reality that Jordan formed part of the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan declaring in the Foreign Affairs Review in 1982:

“the Jordanians and Palestinians are now one people, and no political loyalty, however strong, will separate them permanently.”

“We are not expecting anything from them. We won’t accept anything from them.”

Abbas is being incredibly naïve if he believes he can now convince the international community into accepting that one people needs two states – and that pursuing that goal should be internationally supported at the expense of achieving an end to a conflict that originated with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

Abbas’s categorical rejection of an American role in ending the conflict by calling on the international community to help create a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – has little chance of success.

Jordan’s King Abdullah should by now be under no illusion that the PLO’s quest to create a PLO-ruled State is doomed to failure. Abdullah should view with apprehension that Abbas’s remarks at the Ramallah Conference could again be laying the groundwork for another PLO attempt to overthrow Hashemite rule in Jordan – as unsuccessfully occurred in September 1970 and is prescribed by article 2 of the PLO Charter.

The solution proposed by Israel’s late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in The Australian on 27 May 1985 now takes on added significance:

“the Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees”

Such a solution – negotiated between Israel and Jordan under the framework of their 1994 Peace Treaty – would see continuing Hashemite rule in Jordan being backed by Israel and America – stability sadly lacking presently in many failed Arab States such as Syria and Libya.

Abbas’s Ramallah statement has presented Jordan with a stark choice – negotiate with Israel or continue supporting the PLO and face the prospect of another attempt to overthrow Jordan’s ruling Hashemite dynasty.

Jordan’s decision should be a no-brainer.

[Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article – is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones" – one of Israel's foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades]

It will be noted that the eminent British scholar of Islam Professor Denis MacEoin has commented as follows beneath the video on Youtube:

"I advise caution here. Many of the statements made by Muhammad ibn Salman in his Atlantic interview struck me as attempts to pull the wool over many people's eyes. For example, in the early section, he declared that 'Islam means peace' and that this was, in fact, a correct translation. As a fluent Arab speaker and reader, he knows perfectly well that 'Islam', which is the fourth form of the verb (aslama) means 'submission'. `'Peace' (from the same root) is 'salam'.

He said a lot of other things (which I can't recall now) designed to present a positive image of Islam. But the interviewee is right to point out that 'din wa dawla' go together. Islam has always been a perfect combination of religion and state. You can't, for example, remove jihad from shari'a law without removing it from the Qur'an, the ahadith, and the lives of the prophet and his successors. Ditto for the Islamic views of all nonbelievers or specifically Jews and Christians. There are many eminent would-be reformers in Islam, yet none of them has succeeded in creating a true overhaul of the faith. The only true answer to Islamic radicalism would be for total secularism. But would-be secularisers such as Ataturk or Reza Shah failed in the end – look at Turkey under Erdogan or Iran under the post-1979 regime.

In the mid-fifties, when the Baha'i leader Shoghi Effendi Rabbani was writing about the fate of Islam, he considered it a dead letter and wrote about its institutions, clergy, etc as being in total collapse. Today, it is stronger in many ways than it was in the 19th century. If ibn Salman tries to overhaul the Wahhabi state, he will be assassinated. I would like to think he will achieve great things, but I would exercise caution about him and other would-be reformers."﻿ [Emphasis added]

A brave man speaks out on the evil wrought by the so-called Progressives in the West who are destroying all that the Enlightenment stood for, seek to silence and criminalise opinions with which they do not agree, slur their opponents as far-right fascists and racists, and try to destroy careers.

Yes, it's Pat Condell, with a damning indictment of the anti-Israel islamophile "cultural Marxists" who have betrayed real liberal values including the right to free speech and women's rights ...

Thursday, 12 April 2018

Very recently, in London, a protest against the odious British Labour Party leader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj_Tejf43_Y

On Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day):

Many people are outraged by this tweet, regarding it as cynical exploitation of the Holocaust on Corbyn's part. To quote just one outraged observer, posting about it on Facebook from Tel Aviv:

"Don't you dare Jeremy Corbyn, don't you dare insult the 6 million Jews murdered, when you cannot remove the stench of Antisemitism from your very core, when you embrace Holocaust deniers & when you count as 'friends' Hamas & Hezbollah, who seek genocide against the State of Israel! "

Meanwhile, British blogger Edgar Davidson has a rather pertinent post, here

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

The tissue of lies associated with the flare-ups on the Gaza-Israel border in recent days has been well-investigated by Honest Reporting, here.

That the usual suspects are making the most of the opportunity to demonise Israel is, of course, to be expected, and in Australia as well as in London and elsewhere anti-Israel activists, typically a strange yet familiar concoction of far leftists and their Islamic allies, have been on the march to demonstrate support for the so-called "Great Return March".

Through the lens of anti-Israel campaigner Alex Seymour (aka Seymour Alexander), a glimpse of the bourgeois Corbynista types who made common cause with Muslim defenders of Hamas to protest in London's Whitehall on Saturday at Israel's treatment of (ahem) "peaceful demonstrators" at "a family picnic":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVmY--vGTgQ

How very Corbynesque of Corbyn to leave an Israel-demonising message on Facebook to be read to the demonstrators, a message that maintained, inter alia, the extremist sentiment that the so-called "refugees" (the only hereditary refugees in the world) have a "right to return to their homes" (with all that would mean for the continuation of the state of Israel!)

"The majority of the people of the Gaza Strip are stateless refugees,
subject to a decade long blockade and the denial of basic human and
political rights. More than two thirds are reliant on humanitarian
assistance, with limited access to the most basic amenities, such as
water and electricity.

They have a right to protest against their appalling conditions and the continuing blockade and occupation of Palestinian land, and in support of their right to return to their homes and their right to self-determination." [Emphasis added]

How does the bit about Hamas go in Lord Sugar's delicious poetic tweet on Corbyn, that I reproduced a few days ago? Ah. yes!

Easier for the inhabitants of Gaza to blame Israel for real and imagined troubles than the fanatical bloodthirsty hard men to whom they are in thraldom.

No sympathy at all for the Israelis, facing the threat of violation of their borders ("invasion" in plain language):

On the same day that demo was held in London, half a world away in Melbourne the usual contingents of Muslims and lefties demonstrated, affirming their support for

"the bravery and resilience of protesting Gazan refugees....

Residents of Gaza
are demanding their Right of Return to these erased and ethnically
cleansed cities in commemoration of 70 years of Nakba, or Catastrophe,
which marks the beginning of genocide and zionist occupation.

We
demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador of [sic] Australia. We
call on Australian politicians to break political and economic ties and
condemn the massacre in Gaza"

And chanting that old pregnant-with-meaning catch cry "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free". Below: a small section of the marching crowd, ahead of the inevitable gaggle of "Socialist Alliance" placard-wavers.

More on the Melbourne demo here (from which I reproduce this photo of a brave bystander):

On Sunday a similar event occurred in downtown Sydney:

Recognise anyone? Yes, behind the flag in the lower photo that's Stephen Sizer's soulmate, Father Dave Smith, in clerical garb and keffiyeh. In the left foreground is academic Nick Riemer, next to Palestinian activist Shamikh Badra, and (far right) the far left's Pip Hinman.

Meanwhile, today by the verbose deputy leader of the Welsh Greens, an anti-Israel stalwart of an often eyebrow-raising kind (as regular readers of my blog will be aware):

How very green of that Green.

Does she not know? Has she not heard?

There are no Israeli troops occupying Gaza. Nor, of course, Jewish "settlers". None since 2005.

As for the legal status of Israel and the West Bank, an interesting interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich here

Monday, 9 April 2018

Eagle-eyed readers will note that I've added to my sidebar a link to an article from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) regarding Dr Stephen Sizer. I've headed it "Try this for Sizer" and have subtitled it "Sizer 101".

Intended primarily for Australians, who before the anti-Zionist campaigner's recent controversial visit to these shores were not as au fait with the ex-vicar of Virginia Water and his views as they might have been, it provides anyone anywhere with a useful refresher course regarding Dr Sizer's anti-Israel activities.

Meanwhile, Sizer-watchers may find the following intriguing (the article referred to is this one):

Sunday, 8 April 2018

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Two recent events confirm that Jordan is seriously considering replacing the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as Israel’s negotiating partner to resolve the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) between Israel and Jordan:

1. The ending of a 9 months diplomatic impasse between Jordan and Israel following Jordan’s acceptance of Amir Weissbrod as Israel’s new ambassador to Jordan.

Jordan’s approval came after the two countries agreed to end their standoff following the shooting deaths of two Jordanians in the Israeli Embassy compound by an Israeli security guard who Israel alleged opened fire in self-defence after one of the men tried to stab him.

Weissbrod will replace former ambassador Einat Schlein, who had hurriedly left Amman last July following this incident.

Restoration of full diplomatic ties will facilitate Israel and Jordan’s ability to amicably resolve the division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) between their two respective states within the framework of their existing 1994 Peace Treaty – ending a long-running border dispute dating back to 1922.

2. The publication by the Jordan Times on 31 March of an article by Jordanian journalist Nermeen Murad headlined “Should Jordan claim the West Bank on our behalf? An old yet new question”

The Jordan Times is published by the Jordan Press Foundation – in which the government-owned Social Security Investment Fund has a majority stake.

The provocative headline suggests the Government could be flying a trial balloon to gauge public opinion should Jordan decide to negotiate with Israel.

Murad opines:

'Did the Arab world and the Palestinian leadership make a strategic mistake when they kick started a political process that drove Jordan to the 1988 decision to sever legal and administrative ties with the West Bank? That step has long been seen to have, perhaps irreversibly, removed Jordan from the table of any serious negotiations for a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based in a “land for peace” formula.'

Murad argues:

“I believe that it can be credibly argued that it was a strategic mistake to focus Arab and Palestinian effort solely on creating an alternate and less legally legitimate claimant to the West Bank, regardless of how nationalistic and symbolic it was to have a Palestinian body representing Palestinian rights, instead of focusing on claiming the land itself as the most pressing priority – even if only for purely tactical considerations."

Murad then concludes:

“.. it appears that the decision to squeeze Jordan out and undermine the legal opportunity that Jordan had to reclaim the West Bank back in the 1970s, is a relevant and important starting point in our review of our past strategies and a critical ingredient in our discussions of a way forward towards a solution.”

Jordan’s long-abandoned West Bank claims could be resurrected following the PLO committing political suicide by refusing to have anything further to do with President Trump’s soon-to-be-released “ultimate deal”.

Trump’s deal will be still-born if no Arab negotiating partner is prepared to sit down with Israel.

In 1988 the PLO could justifiably claim to be the sole spokesman for the Gazan and West Bank Arab populations. Hamas – founded only in 1987 – never represented any challenge to the PLO then. However in 2018 the PLO sole-spokesman claim has been completely undermined by Hamas – which itself has governed Gaza with disastrous results since 2007.

Both organisations continue to fail to reconcile their differences, engage in on-going internecine conflict and refuse to give their long-suffering populations any say in their own future.

Jordan appears to be readying itself to jump on the Trump bandwagon – leaving the PLO and Hamas behind battering themselves into political irrelevance.(Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article – is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones" – one of Israel's foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.)

Saturday, 7 April 2018

Jean Vercors made aliya from France some years ago. He will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, since he has had guest posts here before. This latest post of his is entitled "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook".

It's prompted me to add this link to a brand-new article by a non-Jewish Sorbonne scholar, the courageous and prescient Guy Millière, regarding the plight of French Jewry at the hands of hate-filled antisemites.

Writes Jean Vercors:

I have used Facebook for years as a platform to share my thoughts, comments and articles. I value that platform because of its global reach. It connected me to some of my friends in France, the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and many other countries. It is a window to the world to differing opinions by allowing me to see what my friends think and share on their walls.It gives me an outlet to speak my mind and to share my thoughts on topics ranging from domestic politics to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

However, I have observed that your social media has reached a point of violent antisemitism, at least for me, and I guess many other people too. I am appalled by Facebook’s insistence to allow this on social media. I cannot believe that a group that calls for the death of the Jews, your own people for that matter, does not violate Facebook’s “Community Standards.” Do you realize how dangerous your media has become allowing the antisemites of the world to vomit their hate on Israel with lies?

I am disgusted that Facebook not only calls this group socially acceptable, but it endangers the lives of our brothers, our families, our children, and more importantly, our people as a whole.Free Speech should not be Hate Speech.

We all know too well that allowing such a negative behavior only encourages the killing of Jews as we have seen it lately when Facebook users that were anti-Zionists and posting anti-Jewish posts assassinated innocent people in France, Israel or elsewhere.

As a Jew, I was taught to stand up for Justice and truth against anyone not matter his faith or ethnicity. We Jews have been standing in front line for thousands of years, defending, protecting and teaching human rights.

As we celebrate Pesach, we all retell the story of our journey from bondage to freedom when we were slaves in Egypt reading the Haggada. Not only to ourselves but to our children and the future generations. It has been this way for 3000 years.

You were quoted coming to the defence of Muslims after the November 2015 Paris attacks “As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn’t against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone. So I wonder Mr.Zuckerberg have you forgotten or ignored your statement that all of us should “stand up against attacks on all communities?” Maybe you do not even know about the double standards applied to Jews and Palestinians on Facebook?

The latest violence in Gaza sponsored by Hamas has launched a virulent anti-Israel campaign on Facebook against Israel and therefore the Jews in general. I remember you said last year on your Facebook page:

”For me, the most important tradition is to remember that we will not be truly free until every person is free”.

I am asking you a simple question, are you really free? If you do not support your people. I believe you are still in Egypt and you have not yet escaped it morally.You also said that you believe in free speech but at the same this free speech turns out to be a highway for free hate.Why I am saying this is because my account has been suspended 3 times (30 days each time). Every comment I posted in favor of Israel, your automated response said i was violating Facebook community standards.In fact, I believe my account was reported to Facebook by anti-Israel trolls and your moderators in Morocco or Pakistan did not hesitate a second to suspend my account.In France, rumors abound that Facebook's moderators are located in French-speaking Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco which explains why most critics of hamas, Islam and political Islam are censored by Muslim moderators who support Hamas.Notably, Muslim hate-speakers continue to proliferate on Facebook, while anti-Islamists face harassment and the loss of their accounts.

My comments were not offensive but true but based on facts. Some examples:· Hamas is using children as Human shields,· 14 of the 16 killed in Gaza were Hamas terrorists,· Israel has the right to defend itself…and so on

And every time, I get the same answer” your behavior is not allowed on Facebook by violating Facebook Community Standards”

Facebook is dealing with some serious contradictions of promoting free speech while running the world’s biggest social network, after being called out on the gap between his words and Facebook policy.

Since the violent Palestinian protest in Gaza last week, antisemitism has reached peaks that it was not touching since World War II.I reported hundreds of times the violent and antisemitic hate speech posted on Facebook that should be considered against your Community Standards.

Every time I get the same answer: It does not violate our standards.

It does violate a standard. My moral standard.

It is my duty to write a comment that expose facts about Israel.For this reason, I am writing this letter to you in hope that you read it well and understand why I cannot accept the existence of Facebook pages that incites hatred against the Jews or any other religious/ethnic minority.

The antisemites who abound on Facebook post the same hatred that led the Jewish people to the gas chambers.This group spews the same hateful propaganda that targeted a minority population to carry out a systematic genocide against the Jews in Europe. Are you conscious of that?

No Hate Speech on Facebook, unless it’s against the Jews, of course!

This is not the first time that Facebook chooses to take sides. I have reported several pages over the last five years only to get the same answer from Facebook staff.This group produces the same vile hatred that has persecuted your people for millennia under the false premises that the Jewish people are the cause of all of the world’s problems.I think Facebook has a moral obligation to stop giving antisemites a voice and an outlet to call for murdering Jews and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. It is unacceptable for a social media as important as yours to allow such blatant Jew-hatred, or any hatred for that matter.

I reported pages inciting against Jews and received a message from Facebook staff saying that “ it was not in violation of Facebook rules.” Wait a minute! I thought that violence and hatred against anybody was to be reprimanded.

I speak for the millions of Jews who are scared to death to stand up for their people, to stand up for Israel, and to stand up for their right to self-determination on Facebook, in part because of antisemitic Facebook users like these that fester such undeniably antisemitic opinions and claim that the man responsible for killing six million Jews was “right” all along.

As a Jew, you can’t ignore the hateful rhetoric against Jews that has always been rampant on Facebook for decades. Or perhaps it just doesn't matter to you?The majority of what I see is dishonest criticism of Israel• Critics who habitually single out Israel for condemnation while ignoring far worse actions by other countries (especially other Middle Eastern countries) are antisemitic.• Likening Israel to Nazi Germany or to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypical behavior is another sure sign of Jew-baiting.• Attacks on the merits of Israel's existence rather than individual government policies are antisemitic.Dr Martin Luther King Jr put it this way when he was approached by a student who attacked Zionism, When people criticize Zionists, King said, they mean Jews. You're talking antisemitism.If you read this letter, I hope that you take my words to heart and do the courageous thing. Do the humane thing. Do the right thing.

· Remove all Facebook pages that call for the death of Jews, Israelis(or Zionists).

The time has come where our people need to be united as one. Our people need to come together and support one another.

I urge you, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook to respond the call and stand as a proud Jew against the blatant Jew-hatred that has plagued us for millennia and has only gotten stronger in the last few weeks.You can file complaints on Facebook’s Help Center and you don’t have to be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or anything else for that matter. You just have to be a proponent of truth, justice, fairness and accountability for all mankind. If we don’t say anything, we have no right to complain when Israelis are getting stabbed to death on the streets of Israel or French Jews machine gunned in a Kosher supermarket or Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor who was murdered in her apartment.Mark Zuckerberg, Give yourself a chance to leave Egypt and be closer to your people, if you claim to be Jewish.Shalom from Jerusalem

Wednesday, 4 April 2018

In the leafy London suburb of Richmond (not to be confused with Richmond, Yorkshire, of which the "Sweet Lass" was a denizen), a nutty piece of Israel-demonising "street theatre" featuring old codgers in camouflage gear, elderly ladies swathed in what resemble the cast off medieval-style garments of that great English eccentric Dame Edith Sitwell, and bewildered-looking kids doing their best to follow the choreography.

Most busy shoppers give this bizarre Israel-demonising performance, the brainchild of the Kingston & Richmond Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) branch, a wide berth, cursorily glancing with puzzled looks, and then moving swiftly on, leaving the players and their keffiyeh-wearing cheerleaders to waste their sourness on the suburban air.

Vile as this sicko little drama is, I reckon the spectacular ham acting of the lady with the
"heart attack" deserves a British Comedy Award!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr_cOdAZUG4

(A MrAlexSeymour video; his spiel about the performance can be found beneath the video on YouTube)

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

This statement has been issued today by Mr Peter Wertheim, CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, regarding the ABC's interview with Stephen Sizer, aired on Friday, and mentioned in my Sunday post:

For centuries, Easter Holy Week was an occasion for incendiary sermons and outbreaks of mob violence against Jewish communities throughout Europe. In recent years we have seen a more subtle version of that tradition take shape. Commentaries about Israel, especially in the lead-up to Easter, often go beyond mere criticisms that are similar to those levelled against any other country or government, and are couched in terms that evoke ancient calumnies against Jews as a group. Some of Steven Sizer’s public statements have been in this category.Although David Rutledge’s interview of Sizer on the ABC RN Breakfast program on Good Friday explored some of these statements, it was a soft interview that allowed Sizer’s self-serving answers to pass unchallenged. Rutledge allowed Sizer to get away with claiming that none of the speakers at one of the conferences he addressed in Tehran in 2014 were criticised as antisemitic. In fact, as was reported at the time, the Iranian-run Press TV described the conference as intending to “unveil the secrets behind the dominance of the Zionist lobby over the US and EU politics”, with one session devoted to examining “Mossad’s role in the 9/11 Coup d’Etat”, and another discussing “9/11 and the Holocaust as pro-Zionist ‘Public myths’ ”.Rutledge gave only partial information about, and under-played the full extent of, Sizer’s own statements legitimising outlandish conspiracy theories blaming Israel for the September 11 terror attacks in the US. There was no mention of the fact that Sizer’s own Church in the UK was so embarrassed by his public statements that it extracted an undertaking from Sizer to stop commenting on the subject while he remained a vicar, an undertaking which Sizer subsequently broke.Nor was there any mention of the fact that in November 2016, Inter-Varsity Press (IVP), one of Britain’s largest Christian publishers, withdrew Sizer’s books from sale and ceased to list them on its website.Rutledge took it upon himself to tell Sizer “I accept you are not an antisemite”, instead of adhering to proper interviewing standards and allowing the audience to make up its own mind. Under the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the 31 democratic countries of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, including the UK, the US and EU, certain kinds of criticisms of Israel are internationally recognised as antisemitic. It is strongly arguable that some of Sizer’s statements about Israel fall within that definition, but Rutledge did not put this question to Sizer.Finally, Rutledge should have taken to task Sizer’s egregious comments about Israel ceasing to be a democracy if it retains the settlements in the West Bank. At official permanent-status negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders at Camp David in 2000, in Taba in 2001, in Jerusalem in 2008 and in Washington DC in 2010, both parties accepted the principle of “land swaps”. This would involve incorporating into Israel’s territory a small part of the West Bank where the major settlement blocs are located in exchange for Israel ceding to the Palestinians an equivalent area of land from within Israel’s pre-1967 territory.Overall, Rutledge’s interview was far beneath the standards of probing, well-researched, quality journalism that regular listeners expect from an ABC RN current affairs program. For this he should apologise not only to the Jewish community but to the ABC’s entire audience. Instead of pre-judging Christian Zionism by only featuring one of its critics, the ABC should for once set aside its customary hostility towards Israel and its Jewish and Christian supporters, and interview one of Christian Zionism’s more able exponents, such as Dr. Jürgen Bühler, the President of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.

Monday, 2 April 2018

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump’s possible call for Jordan to replace the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as Israel’s negotiating partner under Trump’s soon-to-be-releasde "ultimate deal" will be considerably strengthened if Trump’s newly-appointed National Security Adviser – John Bolton – and Secretary of Defense – James “Mad Dog” Mattis – concurs on such a move.

“I hope at some point the Administration recognizes and perhaps it is already quietly – that the two-state solution isn’t going anywhere. If anything I would say to King Abdullah of Jordan – “Be prepared to reassert Jordanian sovereignty over part of the West Bank – negotiate with Israel”. I think that’s a far better outcome than the continued pursuit of a mythical – I believe unattainable – viable Palestinian state”

Mattis has favoured the Obama-Kerry strategy – pointing out to the Aspen Security Forum in July 2013:

“We have got to find a way to make the two-state solution that Democrat and Republican administrations have supported, we’ve got to get there. And the chances for it, as the king of Jordan has pointed out, are starting to ebb because of the settlements and where they’re at, are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.”

Mattis further reasoned:

“I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians. So he [Secretary of State John Kerry] is right on target with what he’s doing. And I just hope the protagonists want peace and a two-state solution as much as he does.”

Kerry however failed miserably – being unable to get the PLO back to the negotiating table after a PLO walk-out in April 2014 following nine months of unsuccessful negotiations on proposals specifically formulated by Kerry to resolve the long-running conflict.

· The PLO refuses to resume negotiations with Israel on the two-state solution: creating a second Arab State – in addition to Jordan – in the territory covered by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

“May 14 will be the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, June 6 will be the 20th anniversary of the Six Day War. The West Bank has been held by Israel longer than it had been held by Jordan, the 1967 aggressor, which ever since has presented itself as the aggrieved party. Today, as every day since 1948, the key to peace is direct negotiations between Jordan and Israel, not a committee”

Mattis’s jocular remarks on meeting Bolton at the Pentagon – caught in an off-microphone exchange – signals Mattis could have already changed his thinking:

"I heard you're actually the devil incarnate and I wanted to meet you"

A Mattis-Bolton accord on Jordan replacing the PLO in future negotiations with Israel will undoubtedly reinforce Trump’s preparedness to make this long-overdue call.

[Author’s note: The cartoon commissioned exclusively for this article – is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones" – one of Israel's foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades]

Sunday, 1 April 2018

After a two-week propaganda tour of Australia, Peacemaker Trust's founder and CEO the Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, formerly vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, has returned to Southampton. And so has his luggage, temporarily lost.

Despite his return, echoes of his visit live on, in the interviews that he gave while here.

A wily disingenuous campaigner, he said nothing, at least that I heard, about his support for the Right of Return, or about the support for a One State Solution that, as I showed here, he has avowed.

This screenshot dates to 2014. But, at the time of typing this blogpost, our old mate
is still listed as a "Liker" of "BDS for the Return", and when we click on the links
provided on its Facebook page we find:

"This page is for Boycott, Divestment and
Sanction (BDS) Actions that are directly relevant to the implementation
of the Palestinian refugees right to return to their homes and lands of
origin."

Screenshot in 2014

"Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a
broad-based, non-partisan, democratic, and charitable organization of
grassroots activists and students committed to comprehensive public
education on the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their
confiscated and destroyed property in accordance with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, International law and the numerous United
Nations Resolutions upholding such rights."

If the original Arab generation which fled (and were invited back by Israel) and the so-called "refugees" who are their descendants (the only such people with inherited refugee status in the world) were to "return" we all know how long the sovereign state of Israel would last.

On Good Friday the ABC (Oz's answer to the BBC, and just as biased towards the left and
against Israel, if anything more openly) Sizer was interviewed by regular presenter David Rutledge, a lapsed Christian with a theology doctorate, about Christian Zionism. The entire program was saturated with leftist propaganda, some of it more egregious than the rest, and the interview with Sizer fitted seamlessly into that predictable agenda.

"Many evangelical Christians today are convinced that recent events in the Middle East herald the imminent return of Christ and the establishment of his kingdom on earth - and Israel is central to the whole plan. These are Christian Zionists, and according to Stephen Sizer they're misguided — and possibly dangerous", runs the website.

At the ABC studios Sizer, pictured below with his minder Father Dave Smith, an anti-Israel Sydney clergyman, looks like the proverbial cat who got the cream:

Rutledge, in a somewhat lighthearted tone, described him as "a rather controversial Anglican cleric" and at the start of the interview mentioned the polarising effect he has. But Rutledge was soon sniggering in the background at some of the ex-vicar's descriptions of Christian Zionist thought. Sizer's spiel was his usual one.

Rutledge assured him "I accept that you are not an antisemite" and Sizer quoted the Bishop of Guildford (the one who suspended him from social media for six months, though that was not spelled out) as privately telling him "Stephen, on the Middle East you're on the side of the angels".

This weekend was broadcast former South Australian premier-turned-clergyman Lynn Arnold's recorded radio interview with Sizer. It opened with such a lot of discussion about Sizer's early life (our old mate was eventually obliged to spell out his birthplace, Lowestoft, for Arnold, who kept mispronouncing it Lowerstoke) that I was lulled into a false optimism that Sizer's propaganda would be timed out. But alas.

"This evening my very special guest is Rev. Stephen Sizer" said Arnold by way of introduction, before reciting the biblical passage (no random choice, for it was cited again later on to deny the validity of Zionism) that Sizer had chosen to preface the interview, from Psalm 87. Suddenly, the interview turned to Sizer's views on the usual Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Our old mate's pleasant, plausible tones were heard declaring that the land is "occupied territory just as it was under the Romans" and that on the usual pilgrimage "On Day One you go to Yad Vashem ... because
then you are not going to criticise the Israeli occupation of Palestine" and launched into his well-practised critique of Christian Zionism and support for BDS.

Overlooking Sizer's past excrescences (could he really have been ignorant of them?) the indulgent Arnold encouraged listeners
to look at Sizer's website and the Peacemakers website to learn more about his views. Deftly done. No word from Arnold about Sizer's chastisement by his bishop, his notorious 9/11 post, his reasons for quitting his pulpit ahead of schedule. Nothing embarrassing to our old mate whatsoever was invoked.

I reckon Sizer left the studio well-satisfied.

Back in the 1980s and thereabouts, Radio 3CR, Melbourne, was one of
the most virulent Australian purveyors of anti-Israel propaganda, its
most notorious anti-Israel voice being that of Bill Hartley, aka
"Baghdad Bill", an extreme left-wing figure in the Victoria state ALP (Australian Labor Party) whose hagiographic obituary (2006) in Green Left Weekly notes:

"His dedication to the Palestinians, one of the most oppressed and mis represented people of the past 60 years, was well known, and his connections allowed many of us to visit the Middle East and gain access to refugee camps and contacts that allowed an invaluable insight into the issues."

'This
week we are joined by Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer with whom we have a
discussion around Christian Zionism, its sway in America and the term
“The Chosen People”. We exchange thoughts about the Christians who are
scared to criticize Israel in fear of being labelled as an Anti Semitie [sic],
as well as Armageddon and the attacks by the Hasbara.'

As Sizer posts triumphantly here, "Robert didn't need convincing":

No wonder he didn't. Martin is a well-known anti-Israel activist:

In this video, which, like the above photo, can be found on his Facebook page, he buttonholes and then harangues a polite group of frum Israelis, including women and girls, his face growing contorted, and his voice strident, with rage:

"You're
racist .... You don't care because you think it's God's will?.... I
won't talk nicely, because you're a bunch of animals!"

A still from the video:

Martin's Facebook page is littered with comments from feral antisemites. For instance:

An Arabic-accented voice announced that the program, "Palestine Remembered", is brought to the listener by the only program in English "totally dedicated to the Palestinian cause", spoke of the program's honour and delight in having Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer and Martin then declared: "I'm so honoured to be joined by Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer today".

Sizer gave the usual spiel, preached to the converted that "Zionism is a form of racism", and answered Martin's eager questioning about the "Chosen" concept with an analogy to colonialism, observing that it is "used to justify the theft of land from the indigenous people, the Palestinians". He declared that "the Bible affirms the one state solution", and told how the British government last year could not be persuaded to apologise for the Balfour Declaration ("the government were so in bed with the Zionist lobby").

Of the messianic hopes of religious Jewish settlers Martin remarked "Let's kill more Muslims, and kill more Christians — it doesn't matter does it?, and Sizer did not demur.
He identified five stages of reaction by "Zionists" to anti-Zionists such as he:

Update, 5 April.

1. They try to buy you ...

2. They try to intimidate you, with emails and articles. People involved in Hasbara are paid to send emails, he alleged, before bemoaning this article in The Spectator by Melanie Phillips. It's "a shock" to be accused of antisemitism, he told Martin, when asked.

3. They try to isolate you, turning publishers against you and causing people who have booked you to speak to cancel the event.

4. They stalk and harass you, telling of his woes with the Seismic Shock blog (his interviewer makes
some telling crack when told the blog owner's Jewish-sounding name)

5. They kill you. "They take people out." (At this point the interview ended so abruptly that even the most pro-Israel of listeners could be forgiven for thinking Mossad had terminated it, but then came the Arabic-accented voice advising that Part Two will be coming soon.)

If Sizer doesn't want to be lumped among the antisemites, he could begin by defriending on Facebook people such as the prolifically-posting Derek Andrew Hands (it would take him some time!):

And sever ties with this bloke:

Tony Gratrex, the PSC stalwart and 9/11truther, merits no fewer than ten pages in part one of David Collier's superb exposé of antisemitism in the Palestine Live Facebook group and is mentioned in part two of the same report. Despite (surely not because of?) Gratrex's appalling record, Sizer has welcomed him into an exclusive Peacemakers (I'm sorry, I'll type that again, "Peacemakers") Facebook group.

As well as eschewing one of the commenters on this recent article:

In response to these comments on that article in Sight

Sizer has posted the following

and his pseudonymous Facebook buddy Harriet S Place chimes in

Anti-Zionist blogger Harriet, whoever he is, seems mighty tolerant of conspiracy theories. Here's what I just found on his Facebook page, with no trouble at all:

Not a good look for a nice Christian boy, Harriet.

Not a good look at all.

Update: Australia's most-read columnist Andrew Bolt on Sizer and the ABC in press article today (hat tip: Ian) See also here and the next post but one.
With many followers, and given his intention to wean Christians, especially Third World Christians, away from support for Israel, I'm not so sure that Sizer is as comical-ish as this very useful article from AIJAC implies.

Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs

Two stalwarts go sleuthing:

For their findings cliick on image

"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"

To read the research report click on image

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'Rod Liddle (2018)

Pro-Israel Down Under

Shalom and Welcome to my blog!I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page ishere

'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)Scroll to end for more quotations

Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?

Click image for link

Balfour and Beyond

Click image for link

Try this for Sizer

Sizer 101. Click image for link

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic

Click image to learn why

The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS

Click image for link

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"

To read more click image

Maps of Mendacity & Mischief

Click image to learn why

These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 – intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 – and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced – has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today.David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!

Click image for more on the lies

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth.David Singer (2016)

Exposing Lies

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The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years?David Singer (2016)

Telling the Truth

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The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.Andrew Roberts (historian)

A voice of courage & reason

He knows, y'know

An Aussie demo against BDS

On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!

Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!

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Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

A nuclear Iran threatens our existence

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.Eric Hoffer (1968)

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אם תרצו , אין זו אגדה

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs...Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)

I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe.Oriana Fallaci

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves.Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

About Me

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in
politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.
Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html

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The spiritual awakening which Jews experienced almost without exception last June must not be allowed to become a sealed and finished episode.... Support must be rallied among men of goodwill and their governments if we are to reach that secure and just peace in the attainment of which Israel has never ceased to believe. President Zalman Shazar (1968)

Our judicial system is one of the best in the whole world. Our democracy is the only one in the Middle East.... Just imagine, what would have happened if the Arabs had, like us, accepted the Partition resolution? There would be a Palestinian State living side by side in peace, security, and, I can add, prosperity with the State of Israel, 62 years later. [C]ome to Israel, and realize how small Israel is and what a wonderful place it is. Diplomat Gabriella Shalev (2010)

Israel's Arab citizens are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy genuine civic and religious rights. Religious freedom is protected in Israel as nowhere else, tragically, in the Middle East. And civil rights, of course, there's a supreme court judge who is an Arab, ministers including in my government who are Arabs, Druze, and members of parliament who are Arabs and so on. I would like to see more involvement of Arabs in civil life.Bibi Netanyahu on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show (5 Nov. 2017)